cLOSE lISTENING

This installation exhibited at Concrete Block Gallery by Andrew J Brooks uses fourteen independent micro players of close listening recordings from contact microphones and hydrophones. The recordings you are listening to are moss moving water, ants living in a log and what is going on beneath the surface of a loch.

These recordings were made in June 2025 as part of Murmuration 6 at the Spittal of Glenshee - a residential listening week run by renowned Field Recordists and Artists Jez Riley French and Pheobe Riley Law.

The installation is part of a funded practice based research PhD at Queens University Belfast, SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music; in partnership with Scottish Canals. The research title is Presentation of Acoustic Ecology through Community Co-Produced Soundmapping in Human and Non-Human Spaces.

All microphone used are made by Jez Riley French: JrF C-series, C-series+ ecoutic mic and d-series+ hydrophones.

There are only two planes over victoria park

Using a 6 Microphones fixed in star array on three adapted stereo arms and a H6 Zoom recorder I made various recordings in and around Bristol during the first lockdown of the COVID pandemic March-May 2020. This included a mobile rig with mobile phone on fixed gimbal recording walking around the empty city of Bristol and a recording of the dawn chorus from Victoria Park using the same microphone set up which became the film and sound installation piece - There Are Only Two Planes Over Victoria Park. A DSLR camera filmed a small patch of sky from darkness to full morning. The film piece is 3 min long condensing 3 hours of footage (see below). It has been installed as a multichannel installation with overhead projector, and was exhibited in Bristol as part of TAPS Now group exhibtion, and online SSA exhibition A Space Between.

Multichannel onsite recording

Mobile multichannel recording rig

Installation proposal drawing

Multichannel projection installation

August Rain

Stereo composition from a field recording.

The image is the sound wave of the audio file and this has an automated pan from left to right speaker. It is from a long recording of rain, there is then an increasing panning backwards and forwards included on it then effects brought in, first reverb or echo, delay and then distortion. It reaches its climax and then sharply stops and returns to the original rain.